By It’s no secret that smartphones are becoming wildly popular as time goes on, and that trend looks like it will continue throughout 2010. According to the International Data Corporation, market share in Q1 2010 grew by 54.7% compared to the same quarter in 2009. The overall mobile phone market grew 21.7%, with 18.8% of phones shipped in Q1 of this year happening to be smartphones.
Both Motorola and HTC showed the most impressive growth on the Android side of things in Q1 2010 compared to 2009 with market share growth seeing 91.7% and 73.3% for both companies, respectively (note: HTC currently has Windows Mobile-based offerings on the market). Other Android devices were included in the “Others” category, which shows a 23.6% increase of market share from Q1 2009.
Basically what this means is that smartphones are gaining every day in popularity, and Android is right up with their with Nokia, RIM, and Apple as growth is expected to be even more impressive throughout the year (for reference, Q4 is seen as the strongest growth period for the market, which saw growth of 38% in 2009 compared to Q4 of 2008).
Kevin Restivo, senior analyst for IDC’s Worldwide Mobile Phone Tracker says:
More consumers are aware of smartphones now due to positive referrals from friends and family and manufacturer’s mass media campaigns,” said. Restivo. “Coupled with increased confidence on the part of consumers, these factors will create a perfect storm of demand for suppliers this year.
I can’t wait to see how these numbers end up looking with the large influx of high-end, mid-ranged, and low-end devices coming our way this year. As Android is custom-fitted (on a phone-by-phone basis) to tailor to non-techies, we should see a steady increase in market share from Android as a whole, as well.
[via GigaOM]
Go HTC & Motorola.
They have worked hard on their phones and its paid off.
well, not such overwhelming evidence of Android taking over the smartphone world as us phanboys would love to see. too bad nokia isn’t in the OHA. that would help a lot.
You know i really want to get into the Droid but its qwerty keyboard is EXTRA primative. The touch screen keyboard is never gonna be a fast to use as say the ENv Touch which has both. I wish that the new env touch would be a droid.
pie-eater,
android only ever became popular with the launch of droid in q4 2009. This year the race is going to be a lot more closer.
Impressive increase by Apple, it has to be said. Their next phone will sell well too I believe, but time is on Android’s side.
Android needs mindshare more than marketshare. At present when I talk about smartphones to clients, I have to say “smartphones, such as the iPhone”, so they know what I’m talking about. It pains me but that’s the reality of the iCult mindshare. Never mind that Nokia is the biggest and Android is the future, it’s the iPhone that everyone has heard of and if I said “such as Android phones”, I’d get blank stares. For now.
Even people with Android phones, if they’re non-techies, they frequently don’t have a clue what Android really is and how their handset fits with another handset of a different manufacturer or even a different model from the same makers. Few non-tech people think of their phone’s operating system and this is a problem with Android (and others) which Apple’s phones don’t have since they’re all the same.
The same people don’t know / don’t care about how locked down iCult products are, which is a shame. The people I explain it to just shrug and say “well I’m not a programmer, I don’t care”. Sob.
I have to say “smartphones, such as the iPhone”, so they know what I’m talking about. It pains me but that’s the reality of the iCult mindshare. Never mind that Nokia is the biggest and Android is the future, it’s the iPhone that everyone has heard of and if I said “such as Android phones”, I’d get blank stares.